Under Construction

As expected, I finished up the last block for the Home and Heart quilt. I keep calling it Heart and Home, but it is actually the other way round. This is Robin Kingsley's design from Birdbrain Designs.

Here are all the blocks for this quilt.

You might remember when I made another of her designs. This is "Love Me, Love My Cat."

It was entered in a special exhibit at the Road to California quilt show several years back. The exhibit was all redwork designs from Birdbrain Designs. This quilt was a winner, and I won a $50 gift certificate to Birdbrain Designs. Home and Heart was one of the patterns I chose. Also, Friendship's Garden and a couple of other ones, and so it's fun to see this sort of "coda" to that whole episode. And now the embroidered blocks will go back into a box to await finishing. I have some fabrics pulled from my stash that could be used to pull it together into a flimsy. I might use some of them, or all of them, or none of them. As always, I'll have to circle it for a while before I make up my mind.

It was with some trepidation that I set out on my journey to the grocery store yesterday. I could hear heavy equipment up on the road. When I turned out of our private drive, I was confronted by a truck pouring asphalt. You can see one side of the road is paved.

Once I was allowed to pass, I was treated to a really smooth piece of road. Possibly my tires are the first ones to pass over it! I should win something, don't you think?

When I got back from the grocery store, they'd instituted a "pilot car." Geez. Our little road is less than a mile, and so the pilot car seemed like overkill. As usual, nobody consulted me.

It was a bit of a wait, but not too bad. When I got home and had the groceries put away, I got to work pulling fabrics for my new project, the Cardinal Mosaic. This is a pattern by Jane Kakaley.

It seems everything these days brings me back to remembering something that happened on our trip. You might recall that we started seeing cardinals when we stayed at Huntington Beach State Park, near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

I'd lived on the east coast when I was a little girl, and cardinals were commonly seen. Then we moved to Hawaii when I was 7 years old, and this was the first cardinal I'd seen since that time. It was Mike's first time ever. It was something of a thrill for both of us, and this one was only the first of many we saw on our trip.

Getting back to my sewing room yesterday, it was time to start pulling fabrics for the Cardinal Mosaic. Most of these are pulled from my scrap bin, but a few are from my bins of uncut fat quarters. I needed a fat quarter of each value. For these mosaics, it isn't important that the colors be from the same piece of fabric...just that they are closely matched in value. And so I pulled enough fabric to make up five different values of red...

five of green...

five of blue...

three browns...

black and white (that was pretty easy)...

and, finally, two oranges and one yellow.

When I had them all pulled and lined up, this is what I had. Try to ignore the tail-end of the cat.

He gave it a good once over and said,

I purrnounce these acceptable.

Hmmmm...this has purrtential.

That's what I'm talkin' about...snooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

That took me most of the day since I had to interrupt myself to go pick up our CSA share. When I had the veggies all put away, I got to work tracing out the next names for the Shop Hop quilt.

I so want to start on my new embroidery project, Appalachian Dreams, but if I'm to get another row finished for the Shop Hop quilt this month, then I must first embroider the names. Appalachian Dreams will have to wait...as will I. For now, the Shop Hop quilt shops are hooped up and ready to go.

They're waiting for me downstairs, and so I'll get at them next.

As for the rest of my day, I'm getting my monthly pedicure, and then I'll do the rest of the grocery shopping. I picked up most of it yesterday, so it shouldn't take too long. I'm itching to get at that Cardinal.